SC dismisses plea seeking CBI probe into Mathura violence

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to entertain a plea seeking a CBI probe into the violence at Mathura in which 29 people, including two police officers, died while members of the Swadheen Bharat Vidhik Satyagrahi outfit were being evicted from a public park.

The vacation bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy, while dismissing the plea, said it was entirely for Uttar Pradesh government to take a call whether to hand over the investigation into the incident of violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The violence took place on June 2 when police attempted to clear a massive encroachment of Jawahar Bagh public park by the members of the outfit on the direction of the Allahabad High Court.

Pointing out that the “direction for CBI investigation is not a matter of routine” and “primarily this is an issue to be decided by the state of Uttar Pradesh”, said the bench, expressing its reservation in entertaining the PIL.

It noted that lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay, who had moved the PIL seeking CBI probe, had not approached the Uttar Pradesh government for the CBI probe.

“Admittedly you have not approached the State government for this,” the court told Upadhyay who is also the spokesman of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Delhi unit.

It also said the petitioner had not pointed out whether there was “inaction” or the state government had not taken any steps after the incident last week or if the investigation was deficient, so much so that it has resulted in lack of confidence among the people, stressing there were several steps that had to be taken before approaching the top court seeking direction for CBI probe.

“We don’t intend to pass any order”, the bench said as it dismissed the PIL which the lawyer then withdrew.

Permitting Upadhyay to withdraw his petition, the court said the matter in which Allahabad High Court had directed the eviction of Swadheen Bharat Vidhik Satyagrahi members from the public park was still pending before it and the petitioner could appear in that court.

In his PIL, he had alleged that Ram Vriksh Yadav, the leader of Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah who used to be a follower of Jai Gurudev, was running a parallel government with the connivance of powerful people in the Uttar Pradesh government.

Tracing the background of the group, the PIL had said that in 2014 the Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah launched a march from Sagar in Madhya Pradesh to Delhi in support of its demands that the existing political system be overhauled and the British-era administrative structure be abandoned.

In the course of their journey from Sagar to Delhi, in April 2014, 500 members organised a demonstration in Mathura. The local administration had given them permission to demonstrate at Jawahar Bagh public park for only two days.

But the demonstrators since then squatted in the park and gradually converted it into their headquarters.

By 2016, there were about 3,000 squatters and Jawahar Bagh was turned into a quasi-republic with its own constitution, penal code, judicial system, prison and army, the dismissed PIL had said.